Posted 2 years ago on May 21, 2012, 6:23 p.m. EST by shadz66
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The insolvent United States banking system : Lessons from J.P. Morgan Chase ...

WHY THE BANKS MUST BE NATIONALIZED

As central bankers from China to Venezuela and from Argentina to Japan are seeking ways to exit from the contagion of the speculative trading of US bankers, progressive forces must renew the call for the nationalization of the big banks, which are supposed to be too big to fail.

Since September 15, 2008 the United States economy has been like a ticking time bomb with the unregulated activities of the banks the fuse that is slowly burning. This fuse has affected the international banking system and while citizens of the United States are focused on an electoral contest, the issues of the future of the U.S banking system, the future of the dollar and the future of the Euro are bringing home the reality of the capitalist depression. Two weeks ago, Paul Krugman released a book entitled, End this Depression Now. This book sought to galvanize action by the US government to stimulate the economy based on the twentieth century Keynesian ideas of stimulating growth. Increasingly, it is becoming clearer that far more drastic political measures will be needed if the international financial system is to be protected from the gambling of the top bankers in the United States. Wealth creation and a new economic system are needed to meet the needs of human beings.

This reality was brought home last Thursday, May 10, when it was revealed the J. P Morgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States had been involved in the most risky type of speculative trading that was not supposed to be undertaken by a federally insured depository institution. The nature of the speculative trading is still covered up by the media but from what has been coming out there were bets placed by a derivative trader who was placing US$100billion bets that the US economy would recover. One report called the operation ’trades in the synthetic derivatives hedging business.’

Whether this is the real cause of the attention to JP Morgan Chase will only come to light when the media and the representatives of the people call for the removal of Jamie Dimon, the CEO of this bank and takes over the bank. While the information on the $3 billion loss is as opaque as the business world of the financial system, the nature of the risk that was being undertaken is reserved exclusively for the big banks and offers multi- million dollar profits in this ether world that is called financial capitalism.

JPMorgan Chase is currently one of the biggest banks in the world supposedly with $2.1 trillion in assets and more than 239,000 employees. I used the word ‘supposedly’ because JP Morgan Chase was one of the recipients of more than$26 billion of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the American International Group (AIG) in September 2008. Troubled Assets was the term coined by the US government to hide from the world the state of the insolvency of the US banking system where the big banks had overextended themselves in the housing bubble issuing what was then called mortgage backed securities. These banks are still mired in the toxic mess from the orgy of speculation of that era and JP Morgan compounded its own risky position by taking over the bad bank, Washington Mutual.

The Bank JP Morgan Chase grew bigger and riskier after absorbing two of the failed banks at the center of the MBS debacle. JPS acquired Bears Stearns and Washington Mutual. Hence on top of its own involvement in the casino economy, JP Morgan Chase had taken on two failed banks in an attempt to save the US financial system.

The Tarp instrument was the means through which the US government had ‘bailed out the banks and investment houses in 2008. JP Morgan Chase was involved in the same credit default swaps (CDS) that was at the core of the gambling that brought down the system in 2008. The speculative activities of the Banks have increased since 2008 and now the press is seeking to lay the blame on one derivatives trader in London. According to the media, speculation by a derivatives trader in London has produced a $2 billion trading loss for JP Morgan Chase. It is still not clear the extent of the loss but we know that it is in the same category as the losses at MF Global last year. These losses add to the scandal after scandal and are supposed to be on par with the other debacles of 2008 when two major Wall Street institutions, Bear Stearns and then Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. This year the progressive forces must renew the call for the nationalization of the big banks which are supposed to be too big to fail.

THE ARROGANCE OF THE BIG BANKS

The rise and impending collapse of J P Morgan Chase is a cautionary tale about the fortunes (or currently misfortunes ) of the US banking system. Older readers will remember the name Chase Manhattan Bank and the era when David Rockefeller and this bank stood at the apex of US capitalism. Today Chase Manhattan no longer exists and has been absorbed through the mergers and acquisitions of the years of neo-liberal capitalism. Then there was the other major US capitalist whose fortunes were made when there were the most brutal forms of exploitation of workers. This was the banker and industrialist, John Pierpont Morgan. The career of JP Morgan was symbolic of the merger of industrial and bank capital to create financial capitalism at the turn of the twentieth century. Today at the start of the 21st century JP Morgan Chase is the result of the combination of several large U.S. banking companies over the last decade including Chase Manhattan Bank, J.P. Morgan & Co., Bank One, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual. Going back further, the predecessors of the current banking behemoth include major banking firms among which are Chemical Bank, Manufacturers Hanover, First Chicago Bank, National Bank of Detroit, Texas Commerce Bank, Providian Financial and Great Western Bank.

JP Morgan Chase is a textbook case of what happened to US banks during the era of neo-liberalism when the Glass Steagall Act was repealed separating investment banking from federally insured deposit banks. Much attention has been paid to the two poster children of the new casino type operators who claim to be bankers, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs. These two are just at the top of the massive political structure that squeezes the mass of the citizens of the world for the top 1 per cent. In the book ‘13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown’, the authors Simon Johnson and James Kwak have detailed the evolution of the neo-liberal world that was spun by these bankers. According to Johnson and Kwak, the bankers created new money machines with new schemes such as securitization, high yield debt, arbitrage trading and derivatives. On top of these serial innovations we now have a new one called value at risk. Later we will be told what is synthetic derivatives hedging business. These “serial innovations created the new money machines that fueled the rapid, massive growth in the size, profitability and wealth of the financial sector over the last three decades.”

It is the accrued power of these bankers that now threatens the global system of capitalism. After the tremors of the financial markets in 2008 these same banks that called for deregulation called for bail outs because they were too big to fail. For a while, there had been word of the depth of the hole in other banks and we are still waiting for the information on Bank of America which is still under wraps with Wikileaks. Only two months ago, the Federal Reserve completed a “stress test” of the 19 largest US banks, which gave all of them a green light in terms of solvency and approved increased dividends or stock buybacks for 15 of the 19 banks. This exposure of JP Morgan exposes the fraud of the so called stress tests.

Although the banking system was propped up and we are informed in the media that these banks recently passed ‘stress tests,’ the news about the risky bets of JP Morgan is a stark reminder that the time bomb is ticking. Since that fateful week in September 2008, far from resolving the crisis of the US financial system, the bailout of Wall Street that had been orchestrated by the Federal government has resulted in a further centralization of financial assets in a handful of giant institutions that dominate American society. The further centralization now means that five of the 13 banks—JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs — held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011. The big five have increased their viselike grip on the US economy over the past five years: in 2006, their financial holdings amounted to 43 percent of US gross domestic product. By the end of 2011, that figure had risen to 56 percent.

124 Comments

What are primal needs to mainstream media or pop psychology is irrelevant. We live in a time of strategic Planning.

1) Not fight or flight, but relation with opposite sex.
2) Not Anger, or rage, but relation to kids, people, community.
3) Not spear skills (hunting and fighting), but networking and community.
4) Getting the message in all communications. What was sent, what was heard, and the result.

Next are the hunter skills, the gatherer skills, and survival skills.

1) Being quiet in the desert, woods, marsh, moraine, and jungle.
2) Being able to fish, hunt, track, and build a shelter in more than one environment.
3) Being able to create, imagine, communicate, tell stories and histories, and to teach hunting, fishing, or working in a factory.
4) Protecting family, family income, workers rights, retirement, social security benefits, pensions, medicare, medicaid, and health care benefits.
5) Acting to streamline income tax, capital gains tax, carrying fee tax, corporate tax, hedge fund tax, shadow and private banking taxes, insurance company taxes, deferred wages, deferred taxes, and derivative financial instruments.
6) Acting to regulate Private Financial Banks, Shadow Banking, Off-Balance Sheet transactions, Supra GAAP Balance Sheet Transactions, and mandating adherence to GAAP Financial Accounting Rules.
7) Eliminate Naked Short Selling of stocks in the US Stock Market.
8) Eliminate deferred Wages for US CEOs and Executives.
9) Eliminate Shell Companies like the ones in ENRON.
10) Eliminate Off Shore US Defense Contractors for tax purposes.
11) Mandate Tax Payments for US Defense Contractors.
12) Recognize that humans run businesses, and that they try to reduce taxes, corrupt the process, commit fraud, avoid taxes, and evade taxes.
13) Recognize that humans will drink alcohol, take drugs, engage in illicit sex, and corruption.
14) Recognize that regulation of business, banks and politicians is the only way to have democracy or a republic.
15) Recognize that we need social safety nets and don't want to live without them.
16) Decide we govern despite human emotions such as greed, lust, use of drugs, revolving doors in government, regulatory capture by industry, corruption, Fraudulent government claims for war, bogus corporate claims for drugs, bogus claims of environmental safety, bogus claims of democracy, bogus claims to land ownership, bogus claims to eminent domain, bogus claims of investigation, bogus claims of goodwill, bogus claims of legitimacy, bogus federal righteousness, bogus federal representation, and rampant federal corruption due to lobbying and corporate capture of the whole federal government.
17) There is no reason we can't issue US Dollars from the US Treasury.
18) There is no reason the federal government can't issue dollars interest free from the US Treasury.
19) We can Eliminate the so called 'Federal Reserve' by using regional banks to protect against banks runs, and we can let corrupt banks go bankrupt.
20) We have a Fiat Banking system that is a Debt Issue system. We must issue debt to create more money. And we must keep a certain money flow going by having money available in the system. Normally people have to have access to money and credit. The money supply is correlated to the population so that there is enough money flowing for the current population.
21) Accept that modern Monetary management stipulates that we must have debt, that debt is good, and that government spending/debt spending is what makes the system work.
22) We can't cut many jobs in the government system without shrinking the US Economy since we are reducing the money flow or the money supply.
23) Economic Stimulus is a meaningless term except that it means more government debt. GDP and Economic Stimulus should target manufacturing jobs as a mandate.
24) Federal Domestic Policy should explicitly state that it is increasing small manufacturing concerns and employment. Small businesses are the biggest part of the economy. Small manufacturing is the base of the US Economy. There is a recognized economic multiple boost from jobs in manufacturing.
25) The USA has a declining economy with overstated GDPs since financial wealth is calculated in the current US GDP numbers. The federal government doesn't care about the people's well being.
26) The US has an inflation rate above what the government reports since the government doesn't care about the people.
27) The US Government has been wrong about foreign policy and all wars since Vietnam. Strategic Thinking and Planing is about results. The government doesn't have a place for humanity in it's war or global policy.
28) Strategic Thinking is Alien to human caring and human respect. There is a corporate flaw and government flaw in Strategic Thinking. The Objective is the focus and the detail are about getting the job done.
29) Paradigm Shift from Strategic Thinking is New.
30) Strategic Thinking Discounts 2nd, 3rd, and 4th level results or social effects.
31) Strategic Thinking in the corporate culture is mostly oriented to the bottom line - MONEY.
32) Public and Private Executives employ strategic planning. This is government and corporate executives.
33) James Bond Movie's are all about Strategic Planning.
34) We live in a James Bond Movie.

Big Picture Corruption.

I will also move this to my post on the Big Picture to save it from any deletion.

Further to the above and to http://www.occupythesec.org/ & I can not speak highly enough of these young people. I also copy here, a few words by Noam Chomsky, "On Banks" :

"Before the 1970s, banks were banks. They did what banks were supposed to do in a state capitalist economy: they took unused funds from your bank account, for example, and transferred them to some potentially useful purpose like helping a family buy a home or send a kid to college. That changed dramatically in the 1970s. Until then, there had been no financial crises since the Great Depression. The 1950s and 1960s had been a period of enormous growth, the highest in American history, maybe in economic history.

"And it was egalitarian. The lowest quintile did about as well as the highest quintile. Lots of people moved into reasonable lifestyles -- what’s called the “middle class” here, the “working class” in other countries -- but it was real. And the 1960s accelerated it. The activism of those years, after a pretty dismal decade, really civilized the country in lots of ways that are permanent.

"When the 1970s came along, there were sudden and sharp changes: de-industrialization, the off-shoring of production, and the shift to financial institutions, which grew enormously. I should say that, in the 1950s and 1960s, there was also the development of what several decades later became the high-tech economy: computers, the Internet, the IT Revolution developed substantially in the state sector.

"The developments that took place during the 1970s set off a vicious cycle. It led to the concentration of wealth increasingly in the hands of the financial sector. This doesn’t benefit the economy -- it probably harms it and society -- but it did lead to a tremendous concentration of wealth."

But to be honest... I'll have to consider a Job offer if it is over $1M for the first year with guarentee of 6 months employment. Damn. We all have to take responsibility for Ethics and Business Ethics, DON'T WE!! Crap. Maybe I shouldn't consider working for these TBTF Banks. DAMN.

This is unconscious Parody. Jamie Dimon is just a man. He is corrupt just like any of us can become corrupt. We might take the "Money".

Jamie Dimon is a Man. He takes Money to put up a front for the Corporation. Can I hear an Applause???

We all have to face this temptation of Money. Of doing the government or the Corporate function for MONEY.

Accidentally Released - and Incredibly Embarrassing - Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in 'Naked Short Selling'

Matt Taibbi Article 15 May 2012 - Taibb Blog

Incidentally, Overstock rebounded from the 2005-2006 short attack to become a profitable company again, during the same period when Goldman was needing hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency Fed lending and federal bailouts to stave off extinction.

The Federal Government as sole issuer of the currency can not go insolvent, so the first premise is wrong. Nationalizing the banking system would be the wrong thing to do.

What needs to be done is a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall and a repeal of the Commodities and Securities Modernization Act of 2000. This would end our too big to fail system, re install the firewalls protecting against systemic banking failure, and regulate derivatives.

Are you talking about the premise in the title ? You succeeded in responding before I had had chance to post the entire article and did not offer a reason as to why "Nationalizing the banking system would be the wrong thing to do." !

Perhaps we can exchange comments after you've had an opportunity to digest the whole article and I'll only add that the reinstatement of "Glass Steagall" is very far from the panacea many imagine though of course it is indeed an important point within The U$A - but it would not stop off-shoring of the very worst practices or indeed JPM-Chase (et al) exporting itself or an arm of itself abroad - to London perhaps, as that is the Global HQ of Financial Crime already !!

Also reading the interviews, you can see regulators like Mary Schapiro (Chairman SEC) stating here interpretation of rules and future rules. This is a sure sign of Regulatory Capture. She should be testifying with quotes to the current regulations and laws.

WHAT is Mary Schapiro (Chairman SEC) AFRAID of. Is she afraid of saying something with substance and then getting angry and Threatening Phone Calls????

Rule #1, if you testify as a US Regulator or as Head of the Federal Reserve - You better quote the right regulations so that everyone can put everything else in CONTEXT. That is Your Job Mary Schapiro (Chairman SEC).

Your posts here are good. You are right in naming the crimes ; suggesting remedies and putting names and faces (Google Images!) to The Criminals. You should consider constructing a 'forum-post' from your information for wider readership than this heavily 'down-voted' thread ~:-)

When money drives almost all activity on the planet, it's essential that we understand it. Yet simple questions often get overlooked - questions like : Where does money come from ? Who creates it ? Who decides how it gets used ? And what does that mean for the millions of ordinary people who suffer when money and finance breaks down ?

"The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse" (Video) ; September 2008 launched an extraordinary chain of events: General Motors, the world’s largest company, went bust. Washington Mutual became the world’s largest bank failure. Lehman Brothers became the world’s largest bankruptcy ever – The damage quickly spread around the world, shattering global confidence in the fundamental structures of the international economy : http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/meltdown/ .

"The Fall of Lehman Brothers" (Video) : On September 15, 2008, the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following the massive exodus of most of its clients, drastic losses in its stock, and devaluation of its assets by credit rating agencies. The filing marked the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. The following day, the British bank Barclays announced its agreement to purchase, subject to regulatory approval, Lehman’s North American investment-banking and trading divisions along with its New York headquarters building. On September 20, 2008, a revised version of that agreement was approved by Judge James Peck. : http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/fall-lehman-brothers/ .

1) Get Money from other Private Investment Companies 2) Select Company to Squeeze out more profits from.
3) Cut Payroll, Fire Workers, Cut Pensions and Benefits.
4) Use Company as Collateral for Loans that create big debt.
5) Special Dividend to Pay back original Investors.
6) Sell the Company for much more money than paid.
7) Pocket 20% of the sale of the company.
8) Pay only 15% Capital Gains without investing or risking money.

The Magic Trick Played on you and Me as Tax Payers:

1) We subsidies by paying for unemployment benefits of Fired Workers.
2) Deduced Interest Payments Reduce Taxes (we have to make it up while they pump up so called profits).
3) When they only pay 15% capital Gains tax we taxpayers have to make that up.
4) When some of these companies go backrupt under the weight of debt Bain Capital Creates - we have to make up the taxes and the cost of higher products.
5) When Pension obligations have to be taken over by the federal government due to bankruptcy - we have to pay as taxpayers.

The Video Clearly Explains how Taxpayers are subsidizing Bain Capital and these Private Equity Investment Companies.

And the Trick is they don't invest a single Dime of Money!

Financial Capitalism is just moving around money. And then just a few get rich. There is no Value to the GDP or Economy.

In Professor Horace Campbell's article,'The insolvent United States banking system: lessons from J.P. Morgan Chase', I read that he proposes wealth creation and a new economic system to meet the needs of human beings. Nowhere in his article does he define what the needs of human beings are but he does insist that it is time for the people to call for these banks to be taken over and the big bankers removed.

Had he instead defined what he discovered it means to be a human and what an individual ought to do and not do, then he would have named how humans have to deal with each other as humans and what to do about it when they don't.

Clearly, the Bankers have not been behaving as they should. They are thugs who loot and the bankers' sympathizers in governments across the world have legalized the thugs' atrocities, with many intellectuals the world over standing in support of both. The common individual bears the horrible effect. But instead of articulating how to be human, how to properly act with others and what to do when any individual, group or government forces another individual to act in contradiction to what it means to be human, Professor Campbell beats the drum for more atrocity.

What an individual requires in order to live is set by his nature and is not open to choice. What is open to choice is only whether an individual will discover what his life requires, whether he will choose the right goals and values in pursing or furthering his life (or not). An individual is capable of making the wrong choices but can't succeed with them in furthering his own life. In a social context, an individual stands to gain greatly by interacting with others by trading. In a political context, only one act has to be banned from all social relationships and that is the act of initiating force against another individual.

Countless examples exist how people and governments choose to violate the fact that the initiation of force against another is evil. Counterfeit banking and the laws that force people to accept it are the political topics of the day. It is not time to nationalize banks as the Professor wants to do. It is time to reclaim the understanding of what it means to be human and live by those truths. In doing so, each individual and all mankind will be better off because they will be living like humans ought to live with each other and have every justification in judging and acting against those that forcibly choose not to.

When it comes to an immediately practical antidote to the injustices in banking today, a good place to start is to rally people to repeal legal tender laws in the United States and any laws that tax commodity money.

The looters in Banking are smart thieves and know that to foist their injustice on people, the power of the law has to be in their service. That is why they colluded with governments everywhere and made the use of commodity money illegal. They promoted intellectuals to come up with the high sounding rationalizations as to why it had to be that way. Many common people accepted it thinking that they don't know better than all these important people. Those who don't accept legalized counterfeiting face the threat of punishment by the government and inability to make any exchange with others. In a civilized society, no political issue is more important to get right than money. Standing firm together and repealing Federal legal tender laws will go a long way in a short time to living freely as humans ought to live by not being forced to use a sham as money
.

Please consider that : "Had he instead defined what he discovered it means to be a human and what an individual ought to do and not do, then he would have named how humans have to deal with each other as humans and what to do about it when they don't. " ... and thus he would also had to have been an omniscient deity, if not G*d Almighty !!! lol :-)

Further re. your, "Professor Campbell beats the drum for more atrocity." - with all due respect ... wtf ?

When all is said and done, it must be taken into account that nothing is preventing the American people from transfering their bank accounts into credit unions and nothing is preventing the American people of the 24 ballot initiative states from establishing state banks like the one of North Dakota and creating a publicly owned Union Reserve Bank composed of the state banks as an alternative to the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank.

As for the 26 non-ballot initiative states that don't have the freedom to liberate themselves from the Federal Reserve Bank, upon observing the increased prosperity of the 24 ballot initiative states united through the Union Reserve Bank, they can demand it of all state and federal candidates seeking their votes.

Nothing is preventing the American people from doing this...except their own apathy.

Tho' I very much agree with the gist of your excellent comment, re. "Nothing is preventing the American people from doing this...except their own apathy." - there is much more to that matter really, than initially meets the eye.

Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss all hell breaking loose as an electronics chain store stockpiles security shutters, capital flees Greece (and Spain) and Max proposes a love market. In the second half of the show Max talks to Detlev Schlichter, author of 'Paper Money Collapse', about the euro, the drachma, the dollar and gold.

JPMC made a $2 billion loss, not $3 billion. But so what? Their profits last year was $19 trillion and they have a balance sheet of more than $2 trillion. JP Morgan ROI has also been higher than average.

Making a loss is not a crime. If you wanna make money, you also got to have appetite to swallow a loss.

Their victims got nothing. Their victims are still being screwed. I f the money was paid back why is the economy still so fucked up? Is it just the Bush war expenditures that are fucking us over? I don't think so. It is because the wrong people got bailed out.

Did the economy get 'fucked up', as you so eloquently put it, because of the bailout? Or did the bailout happen because of the said economy getting 'fucked up'? The bailout did nothing to 'fuck up' the economy, the bailout money was nothing compared to our national debt. Hence, paying off the bailout would not have made any difference in economic recovery either.

No one single reason exists for the current economic gloom. And bailing out borrowers would have been the worst thing that the govt could have done. It did the right thing in keeping bank solvent and bailing them out. I am sure the average OWS guy would not agree to the previous statement but that ok. I dont have to please the crowd.

Interesting comment ! With lots of implications but I'm in a rush as I type this, so will try to get back to you 'asap' !! Very briefly, $2B loss has iceberg quality (more is unseen thus far) and - IF ONLY Private Banking Corporations did not need you, I & everyone we know to underwrite them, I'd agree with you !!!

"Iceberg Quality" was a somewhat cryptic and clumsy phrase, alluding to there being much more that is 'unseen' than seen and which is capable of enormously and fatally damaging the entire enterprise with possible domino effects. Further, two articles which will satisfy your curiosity and an insight (from a Billionaire - if that cuts ice with you!) re. "The Theory of Money" :

"The Biggest Financial Scam In World History" by Washington's Blog (July 06, 2012) Why Is the Libor Scandal So Important to You ? There have been numerous big banking scandals recently. But the Libor scandal is the biggest financial scam in world history." :

Encore : "Your inclination and propensity to think well of bankers and their motives & behaviour, is loyal and rather touching, though it is utterly misplaced (imo)" and ... Q.E.D !!!

My positions and thinking are clear over the course of this thread. All you had to to was read or browse, click a link or two & maybe watch a video. However your ill considered and unpunctuated response is less a thought out comment and more a reactionary reflexive 'brain fart' !!

You know that there is something very wrong and re. "asinine" ... WTF ?!

You trust the Banskers over the Government, do you ?!!! Or d'you accept that the Banksters actually own the Government ?!! Does Democracy (You may recall "Government of the people, by the people, for the people") get any kind of a look-in, in your thinking ?!

JP Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase. He has been the most active among the bankers in manipulating the system playing both sides of the political game and arguing against the regulation of the banks. Jamie Dimon was paid over US $23 million last year and now it is coming out that it is the accounting scams that produced the paper profits that enabled the big bonuses for Dimon and the traders who were urged to make riskier bets. Dimon has been the most active in the press and in his visits to the Obama White House. He has argued for the ‘markets’ to take their course when his bank has been in operation in a world that is beyond the reach of markets. While the world of these bankers is beyond the ‘market’ these are the financiers who promote the myth that the development of a generalized market (the least regulated possible) and democracy are complimentary to one another. The same bankers who argue that the economic sphere and the political sphere are separate and that the market does not need the state are the same bankers who are expending billions to lobby so that the limited regulations proposed by the Dodd-Frank legislation of 2010 are not affected. The Dodd-Frank legislation included one particular clause called the Volcker rule that was supposed to ban proprietary trading by the lords of the universe.

Jamie Dimon has been described by Barack Obama as one of the smartest bankers in the United States. Obama was simply exposing the subservience of the federal government to the bankers who are the same group pouring millions into both campaigns. The bankers are ensuring that whichever party wins in November, the US banking system will be protected. Barack Obama timidly called for regulating JP Morgan while actively engaging the soliciting of funds from one of the most notorious ‘private equity’ firms in New York. The close relationship between the private equity firms and the bankers constitute the power of the top one per cent and the US government acts to serve this one per cent. After the big scare of 2008 there was fear internationally that there would be a run on the dollar. It was this fear that induced the members of the US government to pass the Dodd-Frank Legislation to prevent the obscene conflict of interest of the banks and investment houses. The expedient which was supposed to prevent the conflict of interest was the Volcker rule, named after the former Treasury Secretary of an era before financialization. The rule placed trading restrictions on financial institutions. In the 2010 legislation, the Volcker rule separates investment banking, private equity and proprietary trading (hedge fund) sections of financial institutions from their consumer lending arms. Banks are not allowed to simultaneously enter into an advisory and creditor role with clients, such as with private equity firms. The Volcker rule aims to minimize conflicts of interest between banks and their clients through separating the various types of business practices financial institutions engage in.

JP Dimon has been the leader in opposing the Volcker rule because his organization has been at the forefront of the practice where a hedge fund is operating inside a commercial bank. Commercial banks are federally insured and are different from investment banks. Under the rules of the so called market, bankers are not supposed to take deposits from customers and then use the same deposits to make speculative bets. This was not supposed to happen but when the banks became huge money machines, they operated above the law. This is how a bank such as JP Morgan controls assets that are worth 20 per cent of the GDP of the USA.

BANKS MUST BE NATIONALIZED

Jamie Dimon sits on the Board of the Federal Reserve of New York. This is the most important position of the US financial system because this is the reserve system that holds the foreign reserves of 60 per cent of the economies of the world. JP Morgan Chase is a particularly critical financial institution, since in addition to its vast holdings; it serves as one of the two main clearing banks in New York City, along with Bank of New York Mellon, handling financial transactions for all other banks. Any challenge to its solvency immediately puts a question mark over the whole financial system. Central bankers all over the world are following with interest the call for Jamie Dimon to be removed from the Board of the Federal Reserve of New York because of conflicts of interest. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York carries out foreign exchange-related activities on behalf of the Federal Reserve System and the U.S. Treasury. In this capacity, the bank monitors and analyzes global financial market developments, manages the U.S. foreign currency reserves, and from time to time intervenes in the foreign exchange market. The bank also executes foreign exchange transactions on behalf of customers.

Tim Geithner now Treasury Secretary was the former President of the Federal Reserve Board of New York. It was under Geithner when billions were handed over to the bankers after 2008. Then Geithner was trying to save the US financial system so that foreigners will not pull their reserves out of the dollar. As Treasury Secretary, Geithner was reported to have had secret meetings with Jamie Dimon in March this year when news first surfaced of the synthetic trades.

Elizabeth Warren, now running for a Senate seat in Massachusetts, has called for the resignation of Jamie Dimon from the Federal Reserve Board of New York. Every citizen will understand that there is a conflict of interest between sitting on a board that is supposed to regulate the operations of JP Morgan Chase. But conflict of interest has never been a problem for the US capitalists. They changed the rules to suit themselves. However, this was before the era when other societies had alternatives. From China to Venezuela and from Argentina to Japan, central bankers are seeking ways to exit from the contagion of the speculative trading of US bankers.

Last year the world was exposed to the realities of the insolvency of the US financial system when there was the debate on the debt ceiling. Now it has been revealed that the debt ceiling will have to be raised again. This is sending shudders down the spine of financial institutions around the world.

The political struggles over the future of the US financial system are maturing. In order to pre-empt utter disaster the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has called for the big banks to be broken up. The big banks continue to act on the assumption that the US dollar will be the reserve currency of international trade, especially now that the Euro is in disarray. These big banks are of the view that the US government will continue the devaluation of the US dollar without a response from the rest of the world. It is this understanding which has influenced the bankers to believe that the US government will intervene to bail them out when they make speculative bets that the US economy will improve. Many refuse to accept that this is a depression.

Sober elements understand that the banks must be broken up and this was stated explicitly in the annual report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The letter from the head of the Dallas Federal Reserve is entitled, Choosing the Road to Prosperity Why We Must End Too Big to Fail—Now. In this letter, Richard Fisher from the Dallas Federal Reserve argues that the situation of the bf banks is a disaster in waiting. Fisher would force the big banks to reorganize and get much smaller. And he would require “harsh and non-negotiable consequences” for any bank that ends in trouble and seeks government aid, including removal of its leaders, replacement of its board, voiding all compensation and bonus contracts and clawing back any bonus compensation for the two previous years.

It is now understood by these sober elements in the USA that the Big Banks may be not only too big to fail, but also too big to save.

The politicians in the USA are compromised and refuse to see the reality. It is the task of the progressive forces to keep the discussions on the JP Morgan losses on the table in order to educate the people on the nature of the depression. The major media houses such as the New York Times are attempting to manage this story saying that this $3-4 billion loss is a drop in the bucket. From the financial papers there is the buzz that one’s loss is another person’s gain. This is cold comfort to the poor all over the world who are suffering in the midst of this depression. In 2008 the government socialized the losses while the profits were privatized. The bailout was one of the biggest transfers of wealth from the poor of the world to the rich. These bankers now need another bail out and the US government will have to increase the debt ceiling.

For the moment the Occupy Wall Street Movement has made it impossible for the government to bail out the banks again. However, far from bailing out the bankers, speculators such as Corzine of MF Global and Jamie Dimon should be prosecuted. It is not enough to say that what JP Morgan was doing was inappropriate from a federally insured depository institution. It is time for the people to call for these banks to be taken over and the big bankers removed.

It is now time for audacity and more audacity. Nationalization and political education at the moment is more important than the elections. Bankers like JP Morgan profit from war and these forces want another big war so that the capitalists can recover. The peace and justice forces must be more vigilant. The JP Morgan Chase debacle heightens the desperation of the top one per cent in the USA.

~

radix omnium malorum est cupiditas ...

~

Horace Campbell is Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University. This article was first published at Pambazuka (see link below) :

Concerted down-voting by Reactionary Banksters' Sock Puppets, with multiple monikers and multiple-personality disorders (or is that a Multiply-Disordered Personality?!) is revealing and induces me to add :

Bank(st)ers can and will still make profits - as they have done for centuries - but people should have an opportunity to bank with ethical (& perhaps publicly owned) banks. The best ethical practices should be present in the 'market place' and should be promoted, incentivised and rewarded 'in the market place' so we the people - The 99% - can make informed choices and perhaps only 'Publicly Owned Banks' can do this - which is exactly why The Infernal Banksters will fight this idea tooth and nail !!!

Further, some other points on the matter of 'Publicly Owned Banks' :

1) Democratic Accountability and oversight over behaviour such as led to The 2008 Financial Crisis ;

2) Prevention / removal of a culture of short-termism and 'perverse incentives' & of just rewarding 'greed' ;

3) Profits to be ploughed back into "Society" rather than to 'private shareholders' (Foreign or otherwise) ;

Of course there is some degree of overlap in my points and almost guaranteed that one could argue the toss, so from a purely US perspective - I'll seek to leave you with something more substantial to read, reflect and ruminate upon :

No argument from me. I've heard of the Bank of North Dakota and all of your points are absolutely valid. We need an economy AND a banking system that works for the people, not the wealthy and corporations.

'bw' : The insidious 'vote-down' on these comments and thread (at the time of writing this response), without any opposing ideas being deployed, clearly and unequivocally displays {imho} a concerted Reactionary, 'Anti-Progressive' ; Pro-Bankster, Shadow Presence on this forum !!!

Prof. Michael Hudson's extensive, highly informative and scholarly piece is, as you say - a "great article" and to further quote you from earlier in this thread : "Why on earth would you be voted down for saying that? LOL. I just don't get what direction some people want to go in. Should we cheer for unethical banks?" - Clearly some people would much rather we STFU re Banks and Banksters !!

It's not a "bot" doing this selective and strategic 'down-voting' - it is an individual or team of reactionary sock-puppets and 'disinfo purveyors' who will increase their nefarious deeds as November approaches !

Luckily the dark intent of some to censor has been obviated by the removal of the 'comment-collapse function' on the forum. Further to the highly recommended article above and this thread in general & as a reminder as to why we are here and what OWS is all about (for most of us on this forum), please see :

As an important aside or as a rewording and reiteration, I'd add that the idea is not necessarily 'Not For Profit Banks' but 'Ethically Profiting Banks', rewarding diligent and prudent savers (as DKAt alludes to below) ; NOT extracting larcenous and avaricious profits and ploughing back profits into society at large.

Let 'Good Practice' drive out 'Bad Practice' - and we (The 99.99%) will gain. I don't think that these ideas are not particularly radical or revolutionary but such are the times we all live in - and as George Orwell said : "In times of universal deceit - Telling The Truth is a Revolutionary Act" !!

You are right and of course Karma points are ultimately irrelevant but which Anti-OWS-Troll &/or Reactionary is responsible for 'voting down' DKAt's comment below do we think ?! And more importantly ... Cui Bono ?

When money drives almost all activity on the planet, it's essential that we understand it. Yet simple questions often get overlooked - questions like : Where does money come from ? Who creates it ? Who decides how it gets used ? And what does that mean for the millions of ordinary people who suffer when money and finance breaks down ?

"97% Owned" is a new documentary that reveals how money is at the root of our current social and economic crisis. Featuring frank interviews and commentary from economists, campaigners and former bankers, it exposes the privatised, debt-based monetary system that gives banks the power to create money, shape the economy, cause crises and push house prices out of reach. Fact-based and clearly explained, in just 60 minutes it shows how the power to create money is the piece of the puzzle that economists were missing when they failed to predict the crisis.

•It democratises the investment priorities of banks by requiring them to disclose to customers how their money will actually be invested
•It separates the payments system and the lending side of a bank’s business, so that poor investment practice by a bank doesn’t threaten the payments system for the whole economy

LOL ! It's NOT what I said - it's that "I" said it !! Trashy / IronButt / F*ck knows which Teabagger Troll / Corporate Plants / Banksters' Stooges etc. are likely candidates as I am always happy to sh!t on anyone of these from as great a height as I can attain !!!

Also - it just takes one individual with many monikers (& thus many votes) to cause trouble here - a situation that we had just this past weekend !!

The trick is to try to NOT take things too personally - something I advocate but don't always actually succeed in achieving !

The only thing that is ridiculous is that you believe a conspiracy theorist without asking yourself any questions. The truth is I am not playing around with karma points at this time and haven't done so in months. You could use the scientific method and ask jart for confirmation, but, as most other posters here, you instantly believe in the silly rumors of conspiracy theorists like shadz66, Renney, arturo, etc... You lost the capacity to use strong logic.

And, this is the downfall of OWS. Co-opted by pseudoscience, it falls as its members discuss the inner workings of the secret Illuminati instead of using logic to solve the real problems.

You've been duped by the conspiracy theorists my friend. And you are the only one to blame for the fall of OWS since you do not demand strong irrefutable logic, but choose the easy pseudoscience of these charlatans. Shame on you.

Fair enough. Let's hope our brains don't melt from all the nonsense on this forum. As an aside, what's your favorite conspiracy theory posted on this site (for entertainment only). I think this one is the site's best. A real gem. It's about the government using genetic engineering to create lifeforms that grow up to be military helicopters. They are called, the Black Helicopters.

Tr@shy : You are a true low life scum, with your diversionary tactics and false allusions !!! I'd suggest that you are The Definitive CONspirator on this forum in your clear attempts at subversion and faux concerns !! D'you have anything substantive or vaguely relevant to add to the post's subject matter ?!

That sounds like a funny one, but to tell you the truth I don't remember it and I really don't pay attention to those types of posts. I tend not to click on them at all. They don't bother me, though, because there are so many other posts to focus on. Why not leave the conspiracy posts to the moderators and just post your own quality stuff? We'd all be so happy and the forum would be better off.

The US government is less dangerous than some other governments in the world right now, does that mean we should ignore its flaws. If we want OWS to be the best that it can be, we need to clean up its flaws. No easy excuses, and no logical fallacies please.

It's not either/or. We can work on the government and on ourselves at the same time.

'd@nzer' : WTF has this got to do anything, you multiple monikered ; multiple down-voting (& self-promoting) ; multiple-personality-disordered manipulative, Troll-bot Piece Of SH!T ?!!! Are you happy being a Whore for the Banksters ?!! Is this going to impress 'April' d'you think ?!